I am in the mound.

Several millennia, I have been kept
inside the organ of the earth,
with bones thin as paper, no shadow
I have wept, and taken hold
of the canister
that houses the scroll
of my words.

Through all this time
I am now the ink, and with the blood
I clutch the thing that life could not avow.

That I am dead. That I am
worth nothing, my glory as lowly and plentiful
as the diatom, with its man-given title
and beauties.

Crusted, I am with the hands,
illustrious sowing we have given many names,
time that wove, and has yet to stop,
time that has seen the moon birthed,
the Milky Way slammed into Andromeda,

Hadrian’s Wall, wars, extinctions and trees,
our sun, fold in, the Bowhead hunted,
the Pacific boiling,
my dear friend die.

I am dead. Time knows me as well now
and as I am alive.

I count my days; we are all making,
dreaming the clementine dreams,
viscous vibrance and duty,
I have it all with me,
in the ground.